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Faster, Better, Cheaper, Needed for Corona Crisis

Arthur Hanson

Well-known member
No industry in the history of man has matched the speed of progress of the semi/nanotech industry in bringing solutions to market and continuously improving them after introduction. Bringing and adapting these structures both physical and virtual to medical is our best hope for dealing with the current crisis we are dealing with. The ability of the tech sector to morph and adapt is proven while most medical systems comparatively move at a snails pace. Sometimes this is prudent, but this is not one of those times. It's way past time to remove the numerous barriers put in place by special interests in the medical industry that slow down many paths to advancement to a slow crawl. These two industries although they intersect at many points, the medical industry is still dominated by well documented slow progress, special interests barriers and markups, especially in pharmaceuticals and procedures that border on the insane. I have priced the procedures in many medical billings and found the costs to be fifty dollars a minute in every single segment of a service in procedures, which would be considered insane in almost every other field. Bringing the speed of innovation, cost effectiveness and rate of improvement of the tech sector to medical is not an option, but a critical necessity if we are to survive and prosper both financially and health wise as a society. The ability of any industry or business to use the law to mandate corruption or inefficiency has to be dealt with for it shows no sign of abating and is only getting worse. This is the ultimate white collar crime for it uses the law itself to sustain it. Sadly it is not just the medical industry that abuses the legislative system in this way. If the tech sector had been dominated in this way, we would be years behind while delivering high cost, low performance products compared to what we have now.
 
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We're on our own. Coronavirus has wasted the scientific and medical community. A lot of decent people and some dipshits will get hurt.
 
Tech can move quickly because you can fail fast, fail cheap, learn, and iterate quickly. In medical, failures aren't so cheap - people die. That's part of the challange.
 
Tech can move quickly because you can fail fast, fail cheap, learn, and iterate quickly. In medical, failures aren't so cheap - people die. That's part of the challange.
That's true, but the cost and efficiency is still insane. Many, many things and procedures covered by tech are life critical but aren't buried in waste, inefficiency, fraud and corruption like the medical sector. Structural engineering, aircraft, braking systems of all types. Medical professionals are just a very few of life critical fields and have to come into modern times. One are is transparency in billing and costs. If costs are out of control, which they are, progress is slowed dramatically from inefficiency in the use of resources. Ask any industrial engineer, if you find waste and fraud in one area, many times it's endemic to the system. US medical delivering 37th in quality at the world's highest cost is a glaring example of this. Efficiency and transparency in use of resources is critical to solving any problem and medical is among the worst for its structure. There should be no individual small practices in major cities, but they are numerous and very, very highly inefficient and behind in technology by there very structure, yet we have them in every major city. How can you amortize the cost of very expensive equipment, systems and knowledge over one person or a few without falling severely behind in efficiency, effectiveness or quality of application. This is an absolute no brainer, but is largely ignored by large segments of the medical industry at high cost to all of us in well documented low quality and high cost. I have read an exhaustive study that documented to achieve quality, efficiency and effectiveness at an orthopedic office, you need at least seven orthopedists. A poor structure is also less able to respond to aberrations and emergencies like the coronavirus, since the more efficiently and effectively resources are used the faster a problem will be solved. Especially in an emergency like the one we are facing, the application of time, resources and personnel in a timely, efficient effective manner are more critical than ever. A system that has been delivering well documented low quality at high cost will not be able to respond in an effective manner for cultures don't reform in a day. Also in this case, some of the processes implemented will make the situation far worse and introduce side effects that may cause as much damage as the cure. Speed is critical in a situation like we have and inefficient, poor structures are far slower than efficient, well applied structures and resources. This is one time the tech sector should step up and help our medical system deal with this challenge, it won't be the best solution because you can't change a culture overnight, but I feel the tech sector can help. What we really needed to deal with this crisis is an effective, timely, transparent high quality medical system that efficiently uses its resources and as the facts demonstrate we do not have one. This is a situation where inefficiency really hurts in more ways than one can imagine. At this time, these factors may be enough to sadly destroy not only our culture, but way of life. Any comments or thoughts in this area are solicited and welcome.
 
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That's true, but the cost and efficiency is still insane. Many, many things and procedures covered by tech are life critical but aren't buried in waste, inefficiency, fraud and corruption like the medical sector. Structural engineering, aircraft, braking systems of all types. Medical professionals are just a very few of life critical fields and have to come into modern times. One are is transparency in billing and costs. If costs are out of control, which they are, progress is slowed dramatically from inefficiency in the use of resources. Ask any industrial engineer, if you find waste and fraud in one area, many times it's endemic to the system. US medical delivering 37th in quality at the world's highest cost is a glaring example of this. Efficiency and transparency in use of resources is critical to solving any problem and medical is among the worst for its structure. There should be no individual small practices in major cities, but they are numerous and very, very highly inefficient and behind in technology by there very structure, yet we have them in every major city. How can you amortize the cost of very expensive equipment, systems and knowledge over one person or a few without falling severely behind in efficiency, effectiveness or quality of application. This is an absolute no brainer, but is largely ignored by large segments of the medical industry at high cost to all of us in well documented low quality and high cost. I have read an exhaustive study that documented to achieve quality, efficiency and effectiveness at an orthopedic office, you need at least seven orthopedists. A poor structure is also less able to respond to aberrations and emergencies like the coronavirus, since the more efficiently and effectively resources are used the faster a problem will be solved. Especially in an emergency like the one we are facing, the application of time, resources and personnel in a timely, efficient effective manner are more critical than ever. A system that has been delivering well documented low quality at high cost will not be able to respond in an effective manner for cultures don't reform in a day. Also in this case, some of the processes implemented will make the situation far worse and introduce side effects that may cause as much damage as the cure. Speed is critical in a situation like we have and inefficient, poor structures are far slower than efficient, well applied structures and resources. This is one time the tech sector should step up and help our medical system deal with this challenge, it won't be the best solution because you can't change a culture overnight, but I feel the tech sector can help. What we really needed to deal with this crisis is an effective, timely, transparent high quality medical system that efficiently uses its resources and as the facts demonstrate we do not have one. This is a situation where inefficiency really hurts in more ways than one can imagine. At this time, these factors may be enough to sadly destroy not only our culture, but way of life. Any comments or thoughts in this area are solicited and welcome.

I can't disagree with any of this. I think the US healthcare system is an absolute mess and unfortunately you have many incumbents who want to keep it that way. I think IP reform is the first step, as that should create a more competitive market for drug, medical device, and health technology development. And I think if the costs for those things can be brought under control it'll be easier to push back on the cost for services.
 
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